"Millville BOE Wants Green Energy Audit", (c) Jason LaDay, NJNews.com, February 24, 2009
MILLVILLE - The city school district is trying to get audited, with hopes that it will save the disctrict money in the long term.
The Millville Board of Education on Monday approved Superintendant Shelly Schneider's reccomendation to apply for a "green energy audit," a program overseen by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, to receive reccomendations on how to update district buildings to be more energy efficient.
According to Millville Schools Business Administrator Bryce Kell, the state program offers incentives to municipalities of up to 75 percent of the cost of the audit.
The state will, in addition, pay the remaining 25 percent if the cost of implementing those reccomendations exceeds 25 percent of the audit.
"It's a new program, and if we can save money and energy in the process, then all the better," said Kell. "We think this will be very beneficial for the district and those who work and go to school here."
The city next month will send out a request for proposals to energy firms to conduct the audit.
However, the state has only approved five auditing firms to take part in the project.
They are Camp Dresser & McKee and Dome Tech Incorporated, both out of Edison; Parsippany-based Clough Harbourt & Associates; Concord Engineering, in Voorhees; and Steven Winter Associates, headquartered in Norwalk, Conn.
"If we're accepted in the program, we'll send out the RFPs to those five companies that qualified with the state," said Kell. "My hope is that the responses come back as something like, If you replace your current light bulbs with this kind of bulb, you'll save X amount of dollars."
According to Millville school board member Mike Beatty, the audits will center around replacing old windows and doors with energy-saving counterparts, as well as updating weather stripping.
"It's going to be a multi-stage project that will benefit us in the long run," said Beatty. "It'll help us save on energy costs throughout all of the district's facilities.
"And if we go through with these reccomendations, we can even get some of these things paid for."
According to Kell, Trenton has recently approved an incentive program that works with energy services companies to help municipalities finance the cost of efficiency upgrades on a 15-year plan.
Kell said he was unsure of what such audits would cost, though he guessed that each school would take less than $3,000 to $4,000 to evaluate.
The program includes a $100,000 cap on state reimbursements.
"We'll see what the cost is when we get the responses to the RFPs," he said. "At that point, we can still turn them down if the cost is prohibitive."
"US Utility Launches OInline Home Energy Audit", (c)EnergyEfficiencyNews.com, February 23, 2009
Massachusetts-based utility NSTAR has launched a package of online energy efficiency tools for its customers including a home energy audit.
The HomeEnergySuite™ by online energy analysis specialist Apogee Interactive gathers information from a homeowner about their energy usage and then calculates their carbon footprint and a series of energy-saving recommendations.
NSTAR customised the Apogee tool for the region’s typical weather, energy rates and home building standards to give a more accurate picture of a home’s energy efficiency.
The ‘Home Analyzer’ also calculates a benchmark score so that customers can compare the efficiency of their home with the US national ENERGY STAR® standard for homes.
Users of the HomeEnergySuite™ can also tour round an interactive house offering room-by-room energy efficiency tips and detailed calculators that show how much energy individual appliances such as TVs, computers and other electric equipment actually consume.
“The desire to live a ‘green’ lifestyle has moved well beyond a casual interest into serious mainstream thinking,” says Penni McLean-Conner of NSTAR. “We want customers to know how to save energy and money in their homes.”
"Students Find Big Savings in School Energy Audit", (c) Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News, February 13, 2009
Pennies turned to dollars, dollars turned to thousands of dollars when determined students did an energy audit of their public school in Louisville.
The eighth-graders in Brian Slobe's Earth sciences classes at Monarch K-8 School in Louisville this month found that some $4,000 in electricity can be saved in one year.
Doesn't sound like much?
Well, they extrapolate that some $250,000 could be saved in their school district, Boulder Valley, which means the savings statewide could reach into the millions.
That's just in electricity. Heating inefficiencies from ancient boilers and bad insulation in Colorado's public schools is assumed to run into the tens of millions of dollars each year.
"It was extremely fun," eighth-grader Harnek Gulati said on Thursday. "It was so much better than learning out of a book."
Their tools were Xcel energy bills, tables on kilowatt usage, meters that measure the watts when an appliance is on, off, and almost off.
Their modus operandi was to form teams of three and then audit classrooms, cafeteria, hallways, the gym, the front office.
Too many lights are left on at night, they said. A few are needed for security, but why leave on all 32 lights in each classroom?
Thursday, Reese LeBlanc ticked off the bad news garnered from one teacher's classroom:
"She has three lamps and three clocks. They leave the computers on 24 hours a day. If she left them on nine hours a day, she'd save $54.93.
"If they didn't use the TV as a clock, the cost would be 70 cents a year instead of $34."
Together, total easy-to-achieve savings amount to $248, he said.
His team has charts, statistics, everything to back it up.
Some ideas aren't practical.
The overhead projectors take a lot of energy, but the alternative — handouts to all the students — has an energy cost, too, they learned.
And the suggestion to get rid of the classroom's electric pencil sharpener would save a whopping 61 cents a year.
But the teams that audited the hallways quickly discovered that while the school was built with big windows to use natural light, there are two fluorescent bulbs in each fixture.
Why not just one?
They tried it, found out that the lighting was still fine, and calculated that it could save several hundred dollars a year.
Principal Rich Glaab is behind the one-bulb per fixture idea and behind Slobe's latest venture: to apply for a solar energy grant and put solar collectors on the school's roof.
"The things we plug in, the electricity we use in schools, we've just looked at them over the years as a necessary evil, part of the cost of doing business, that we have no control over," Glaab said. "Brian and his students have shown that we do have some control over it. The savings are phenomenal."
Slobe has been doing energy audits with his eighth graders for five years now, and each year they find new ways to save money.
"It's real success has been showing students that they can take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the real world," Slobe said.
They learned that a 75-watt incandescent bulb, very hot to the touch, wastes about 60 of those watts in inefficient heat energy. The spiral fluorescent bulbs are several times more efficient.
The toasters, microwaves, stereos, TVs — all carry a "phantom load" of energy usage even when they're not doing what they were built to do, but merely beaming the time or idling, they learned.
"Connecting all the parts was extremely challenging, but worth it," said eighth-grader Ally Meyer. "This makes you realize how much you can control.
"I already found out that my family saves $175 a year because we switched from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent."
The eighth-graders are well-versed in the Kill O Watt, a device that precisely measures the watts put out by an appliance.
Twenty-five of the students are bringing the Kill O Watts home to audit their own houses and find out where their families can save money.
Boulder Valley School District pays some $5 million a year to heat and light its 55 schools and other buildings, says Ghita Carroll, the district's new sustainability coordinator.
Part of a $300 million bond issue is dedicated to making energy improvements in all the schools, Carroll said.
"We have a lot going on, but it's been pretty fragmented," Carroll said. The goal is to get a handle on how much energy can be saved district wide then take a coordinated approach to it.
So far, BVSD has replaced lights through the district with more energy-efficient bulbs.
"We're replacing boilers with much more efficient boilers," she said. "We're doing energy tune-ups."
Carroll listened to the presentations on electricity loss at Monarch last week. "I was impressed that the eighth-graders were thinking about this," she said.
Recently, the state auditor estimated that $4.5 billion is needed to bring Colorado's public schools up to date — a figure that includes general renovations and replacing crumbling schools, as well as becoming more energy efficient.
Last year, the Colorado General Assembly passed the Building Excellence in Schools Act which allots $500 million to help school districts update buildings. The carrot of state matching funds can help the districts convince local voters to say "yes" to bond issues, said Ted Hughes, the director of capital construction assistance for the Colorado Department of Education.
Many schools were built more than a half century ago, when the norm was to put in huge, inefficient boilers Hughes said. "No one was thinking about energy costs then," he said.
The cost of changing out lights in the schools — from incandescent to compact fluorescent — can be recouped in just five years, he said, as way of example.
A bill passed in 2007 requires any school district project that gets a quarter of its funding from the state meet a high-performance energy standard, Hughes said.
"There is more and more awareness out there," Hughes said. "A lot of it springs from common sense but it is also driven by the governor, who is passionate about it."
"The Importance of an Energy Audit", (c) Patricia Rivera, Dallas News, February 1, 2009
Even with soaring energy costs, home inspector Mark Cannella finds that many homeowners still don't understand the value of a home audit.
"Most of my customers come to me because they aren't comfortable in their homes," Cannella says.
Air leakage accounts for about 30 percent of heating expenses, experts estimate. As homeowners continue to look for ways to save money, making a home more efficient by sealing is a good way to start.
Energy audits help homeowners determine how and where a house is losing energy. They evaluate the efficiency of a home's heating, cooling and electrical systems.
Cannella says a good home audit can also create a cozier and healthier home with improved air quality.
"An audit takes the guess work out of the equation. It can answer questions about why rooms are cold and what may be causing dry skin in the winter," he says.
Homeowners can use one of several do-it-yourself guides available online to assess their home's energy efficiency. The U.S. Department of Energy, for instance, offers a walk-through guide on its energy efficiency and renewable energy Web site, www.eere.energy.gov.
A professional also can perform a more detailed audit using tools, such as a blower door test, thermal imaging and infrared scanning, duct-leakage testing and air-flow evaluations. In some states, local utility companies offer free or discounted energy audits to their clients.
Cannella says that if you take the time to correct problems identified in an audit, it's important to request a post-test to verify that the work was properly completed and to re-establish ventilation and infiltration rates.
A professional home auditor should not try to sell anything but rather help you make a more informed decision about how to reduce home energy cost.
If you're doing an audit yourself, check for leaks in gaps along the baseboard or the junctures of the walls and ceiling. Other common places for leaks: window frames, fireplace dampers, electrical outlets, mounted air-conditioning units, plumbing fixtures and attic hatches.
The caulk and weather strips should not allow for any gaps or cracks. If so, they should be replaced. Homeowners should also check the caulking on the exterior of the home, around doors and windows.
An audit also requires that you check that the heating and cooling systems in a home are well maintained. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 56 percent of energy use involves heating and cooling. The equipment should be checked once a year.
An advantage of an audit is that it forces homeowners to become aware of problems they didn't know existed.
The difficult task is to determine the biggest return on your investment.
In addition to air sealing through caulking and using weather strips, the following tasks cost little and offer paybacks in less than two years, if not immediately:
• Replace furnace air filters regularly.
• Insulate hot water pipes and install heat trap fittings at flex connections. Insulate the first five feet of cold line.
• Install low-flow efficient showerheads and faucet aerators.
• Install gaskets behind electric outlets and switch plates on exterior walls.
• Dust baseboard and wall heaters.
• Install programmable thermostats.
• Install do-it-yourself plastic storm windows.
• Install dimmer switches, photocells, timers and motion detectors.
• Install a do-it-yourself insulated panel or cover to seal the fireplace when not in use.
No comments:
Post a Comment